


The Real Story Elphias Doge Told Rita Skeeter

by Realsupergirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:01:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15531828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Realsupergirl/pseuds/Realsupergirl
Summary: Elphias Doge would like to set the record straight from what he really told Rita Skeeter about his relationship with Albus Dumbledore.





	The Real Story Elphias Doge Told Rita Skeeter

It was the winter of 1892, and Albus and I had been left behind at Hogwarts our first year there. Albus, it seemed, was happy to be out of his house and leave his brother Aberforth the unpleasant duties of standing up to their father and helping their mother care for their sister. These roles would be switched as the two grew older, of course.  
Albus was one of the only people who was not scared to come near me. I’d had dragon pox the summer before beginning Hogwarts, and this made most of my classmates treat me terribly, but Albus was smart and compassionate and knew I was no longer contagious and suffering from the rejection. This part of what Rita Skeeter wrote about our relationship was true. But she didn’t really want to hear about the rest.  
A few years later, Albus would go on to become my first kiss, and I’ve come to wonder since then if this was the real reason behind his interest in me.  
But I can hear Albus’ voice in my head even today: “Elphias, my dear boy, sex is only fleeting, but love lasts a lifetime if you treat in gently.” He would have shaken his head and twinkled his sparkling blue eyes at me at the thought that our relationship was about sexual attraction or exploration. Our friendship was much deeper than that, and I know it, even though I constantly have to second guess my own feelings about him.  
I suspect some of my bitterness is that I’ve always felt our love was thwarted. The night he kissed me was the Winter Ball our third year at Hogwarts. I’d never felt so alive as I did that night. I’d been feeling something - I couldn’t name it or know how to describe it – for months every time Albus and I sat huddled close together in the Gryffindor common room studying. But then one night after few glasses of alcoholic mead, Albus pulled me toward him and kissed me for a long time, pressing his body into mine.  
We never actually talked about that kiss. We kissed a few more times, secretly, but then summer came, and Albus met Gellert Grindelwald, and seemed to forget about me. Not completely. I’d somehow slipped back into being his confidante, his best friend, without my consent. I didn’t even realize this was what happened until the night he told me he’d had sex with Gellert, and how he’d realized he was gay.  
I remember my first question.  
“Gay? Is that what we are?”  
Albus just stared at me. “We? Are you gay too, Elphias old chap?”  
I remember I just stared at him. DIDN’T YOU KISS ME? I should have screamed at him.  
It seemed that even though he’d kissed me, multiple times, he’d somehow gotten the message that I was just experimenting, while he was finding himself. He was gay. I was just a little kid, even if we were the same age. I was messing around, he was figuring out something important. That was always the way it was, about everything. Gellert was so much smarter, more creative, more innovative. And when I suggested that some of their ideas were rather dark, he dismissed my concerns as being a limitation of my own understanding.  
It also occurred to me that night that maybe it was just that he was never that into me in the first place.  
Maybe he thought he was when I was the only boy in school he could find to kiss, who he thought might be gay too. But then Gellert came along, and he was excited. He was sure of who he was, not because of what he felt for me, but because of what he felt for Gellert.  
He broke my heart that night. They say we never get over our first love. We go on to love others, we make love to others, we marry. But our first loves remain hole in a hearts that no other can fill.  
For me, that hole is in the shape of Albus Dumbledore.


End file.
